Will Never Rise Higher Than A Veeblefetzer Repairman
Also, they'll end up repeating history, or so I've been told. You can credit Santayana, the guitar chap, from coming up with this bon mot. How very profound of him. Let's have an album cover whilst we're about it. Art!
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| Wowsers. I'll have a pint of what the artist was drinking. |
Where was I? Sorry, having a party going on in your head 24/7 can throw you off at times. Can you keep it down, chaps? Ta ever so much.
Ah! Yes, history repeating itself. This is significant because, one hundred and four years ago to the day, the Teutons on the Western Front mounted their mighty last-ditch effort to finally win the First Unpleasantness 'Special' Military Operation. This went by the name of either "Kaiserschlacht*' or 'Kaiser's Battle', or the "Friedensturm" a.k.a. "Peace Offensive". Art!
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| Staged, but quite representative |
The intent was to split the British and French armies apart, drive them backwards and defeat them in detail before the pesky (and numerous) South Canadians arrived in numbers. They left it a bit too late as recently-arrived South Canadian divisions ended up butting heads with Teuton divisions.
ANYWAY the Teutons HAD to win this onslaught; their economy was in the toilet, there was revolution brewing and they were running out of men. Their stubble-hoppers and population at large had been told for years that the Teuton U-boat campaign was strangling the Allies, that the French were on the brink of famine and that in Perfidious Albion people were reduced to eating cowheel tripe and with One Last Push the whole of their front in France and Flanders would collapse. Art!
Of course the Teuton soldiery ate this up with a passion, as not only do Teutons lack a sense of humour, they are also highly gullible, and at this time people trusted their governments to tell the truth. The fools!
What happened in real life, rather than in Kaiser Wilhelm's fantasy-land-in-his-head? The Allies knew an attack was coming, as the Teutons had been railroading entire divisions from the now-quiescent Eastern Front to the Western Front; they didn't know when or exactly where, which is a bit of an omission. Art!
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| Teuton tourists trample territory |
They succeeded in pushing the British and French way way back, and in doing so came across the rear areas where supplies were dumped.
Ooops.
The Teuton stubble-hoppers gazed, aghast and amazed, at the literal mountains of supplies the Allies had stockpiled, including delicacies that had vanished from their rations years ago, and which were simply unobtainable back home. Art!
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| A mere drop in the ocean |
This had two consequences. Firstly, the soldiery realised they'd been lied to, protractedly and repeatedly, which immediately flattened their morale, and of course the next question was 'What else have they been lying to us about?' Seriously, lying to your troops never ends well. Confronted with an endless supply of food and alcohol, the Teutons ate themselves into a stupor and drank themselves into a coma. Their grand sweeping advance suffered severe delays as you can't fight very well when hungover or completely blotto, or are sleeping off a seven-course meal from soup to nuts.
Tsar Poutine - he's had his chips!
Yes yes yes, I realise this is bordering on Politics, except it's far too much fun to tweak Dimya's rat-like tail for me to stop.
"Reclaiming History"
Yes, Your Humble Scribe is still wading through this monster of a book. We've covered the assassination itself, then the autopsy, and now we're on the life of Lee Harvey Oswald. Which alone gets a total of 279 pages, essentially a book in it's own right, and this is merely all the factual information that the author analysed. He doesn't even get to the conspiracy theories until over 900 pages in. Art!
So that still leaves 600 pages to confront the paranoid swivel-eyed loonwaffles. I have reached page 555, for your information.
I was thinking of adding in an item about "The War Illustrated" and decided we've got quite enough martial ardour**. So instead -
"Skippy"
To those of Conrad's generation, this single word instantly conjures up an Ocker television program, about Skippy The Bush Kangaroo, who was a friend ever true. Conrad wonders what he or she tasted like when roasted? who thought this one up. Art!
Kangaroo-throttling: the next new Olympic sport?
ANYWAY you're all wrong wrong wrong, because Conrad is talking about Skippy Homeier, the South Canadian character actor who was a child star, later making the rare successful transition to an adult actor. This is not common, gentle reader. Okay, Art! Less coal more goal.
Nope, Conrad's not sure how to pronounce it, either.
In fact he changed his name to 'Skip' as an adult, because nobody wants a casting agent to confuse you with a kangaroo. You would probably recognise him from two roles he played in "Starry Trex", one as a manipulative neo-Nazi - Art!
Tsar Poutine's heart beats a little faster ...
- and in the second as a bat-effluent crazy space hippy with follical challenges. Art!
No danger of audience members thinking to themselves 'You know, I've seen this chap before ..."
More More "Tormentor"
O very well if you insist. As you recall Luma has been visited by the police, lead by the very suspicious DS Oswald. Their search is not going well.
The
detective checked the date on the receipt, examined a ball closely and
shrugged. Meanwhile the other police had
gotten the garage door open.
‘The ladder won’t fit in the
kitchen, you’ll have to take it down the back passage, then around and in the front door,’ called Louis
They didn’t believe him and
chipped the doorframe trying to manouevre the hefty metal ladder inside. After swearing and sweating the three
disappeared, coming up the front path five minutes later. Oswald darted a look of dislike at Louis, who
remained impassive. Finally the ladder
was erected under the attic trapdoor on the top landing and Oswald clambered
up.
‘Is there a light?’ he called.
‘The switch is on the floor next
to the trapdoor.’
Muted clicking followed, to the
accompaniment of Oswald swearing.
‘It doesn’t bloody work!’
Louis shrugged.
‘Haven’t been up there in years,’
he informed Moss. One of the uniformed
officers went back to their car and dug out a torch. Five minutes of searching in the attic
produced a dirty Oswald, smeared with dust and cobwebs.
‘Downstairs,’ he told the others,
shortly. For a second in the back room
he looked satisfied, before realising what the weapon was.
‘For cats. I don’t want them ******** in the garden,’
explained Louis.
The trio spent plenty of time in
the kitchen, going through cupboards and their contents. The flour attracted most of their attention
to judge by the amount left on the floor and sideboard. After a total of ninety minutes searching,
including pulling back carpets and sounding walls towards the end, the police
left a very annoyed Louis to put things back in order.
‘Come back and harass me
anytime!’ he called after them.
Finally -
I shall have to keep this short, as we are already over the Compositional Ton. Yesteryon Conrad watched an ABC interview with a South Canadian officer who had done vehicle audits for twenty years with their military, assessing how fit for service trucks and the like were before being accepted. His surname was 'Telenko' so he may have brought a little bias into things ...
ANYWAY he stated that the Ruffians base their logistics on trains. They don't have that many trucks to begin with, as all they are supposed to do is ferry supplies from railhead to the frontline. This means that they can move about 90 miles from their railhead before running out of supplies, and GREAT BIG FAT HAIRY SURPRISE Kiev is a hundred miles from their rail crossing point. This quite ignores all the trucks that have bogged down and been abandoned, as well as the trucks that are - ah - no longer fit for purpose after the Ukes have been at them with drone missiles or artillery. Art!
This, Vanya, is why you are starving.
He said a lot more that was just as interesting, which will have to wait for another blog. Chin chin!
* "Kaiser" and "Tsar" are both derived from "Caesar". Just so you know.
** NOT to be confused with 'marital ardour', which is most definitely NSFW.
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